Chapter 17: The Chest

I texted Tobin the address, and I told him to call my father if I wasn't out by four.

He wrote back one line: I'm in the car. I'll be across the street.

I rang the bell at the great white house on Elm Street at two exactly.

Brendan opened it himself.

He wore a gray sweater and no tie.

His hair was a little out of place, which I had never seen in sixty years.

"Thank you for coming."

"You said you had the key."

"Upstairs."

The housekeeper was off on Thursdays.

The house was silent, and it smelled of lemon polish.

We climbed to the second floor, and he opened a door at the end of the hall.

It was a narrow room with a sewing machine and a dress form wearing half a gown.

A green curtain hung at the window.

Behind the dress form, under the sill, sat the cedar chest.

It was smaller than I remembered.

Brendan took a small brass key from his pocket and held it up.

"I took it out of her handbag this morning," he said.

"She's never once locked a room against me in twenty-five years."

"And now she has."

"Now she has, and the only person who knew about it was you."

He looked at me.

"Lena says you know everything.

"She says you stood in the post office and told her the whole story, down to the bracelet."

"Did she tell you what I said about the photograph?"

"She told me you found it."

"Then you know how much I know."

"I want to know how."

His voice was very level.

"Nobody has ever heard of that chest.

"And you stood on a university lawn and told my grandmother where she hides the key."

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